Online documentation has gained popularity and acceptance as the world wide web and the Internet has become a regular part of business life. In business settings, online documentation is expected and utilized for many purposes, such as for providing information about a software product. Online documentation is expected to include links (e.g., hyperlinks) among various document content to enhance the reader's experience with the material. Because document cross-reference links are typically required in the online documentation, such links have become part of the documentation development process.
Creation and management of a large quantity of cross-reference links are particularly challenging at least in part because links are tightly related to document content, and typically the content is constantly changing. Current link management approaches are inefficient in handling links among multiple documents or document parts, and accordingly improvements are needed.